Rabat is a Dutch roadmovie, and the first film made by Jim Taihattu and Victor Ponten, from Habbekrats. Habbekrats, founded in 2004, is an independent dutch advertising company, which focuses specifically on people and companies with a so called 'no-nonsense' mentality. For example, they made a videoclip for the dutch rapduo The Opposites called 'Dom, lomp & famous' They have also worked for Het Parool, Freshcotton, MTV Netherlands and DuvelDuvel.
It was filmed in the summer of 2010 during a period of five weeks[1]. The premiere was on the 6th of June 2011 at Tuschinski in Amsterdam.
The three main characters are played by Nasrdin Dchar, Achmed Akkabi and Marwan Kenzari. The film was shot by a young cameraman from Holland: Lennart Verstegen.
In the movie Nadir (Nasrdin Dchar) has to bring a taxi that used to belong to his dad, to his uncle in Rabat, in Morocco. At first he intends to go alone, but his two friends Abdel (Achmed Akkabi) and Zakaria (Marwan Kenzari) invite themselves along. They travel through Holland, Belgium, France, Spain and Morocco. Along the way they experience all kind of things. In France they pick up a hitchhiker called Julie (Stéphane Caillard) with whom he falls in love. In Spain they get arrested and treated unfairly by the police, and when they go clubbing in Barcelona with Julie and her friends, they aren't allowed in the club, because they're foreigners. Along the way Nadir is keeping a secret from his two best friends with whom he has been friends with for seventeen years, and is planning on opening a shoarma restaurant with. The secret causes a big fight on their way there, but also makes their friendship stronger. At the end they all go their own way; Nadir goes back to Barcelona, to Julie, Zakaria goed to visit and find his family in Tunisia, and Abdel goes back to Amsterdam to start up their shoarma restaurant.